Cardiff – Page 3 – Just thoughts

A great day out with Stuart at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I’m sure he lost count of the times I said – I don’t do culture. That’s of course not strictly true, but I do find it challenging to engage with abstract sculpture and most modern art. It’s therefore not surprising that the pieces I enjoyed best were ones that I could work out what they were!

A collection of the images I took during our visit can be seen here on Picasaweb. In time, when the new Google Photos has got itself sorted out, I’ll find a better way to create albums than the way I did creating this one. I plan to write a blog post on the subject on this blog as soon as I have the time!

My time has been pretty much taken up just recently with launching two new blogs. The first “Thought grazing 3A” to support a community initiative on Streetlife in North Cardiff where I’ve offered IT enablement support for Third Agers. The second has been the re-launch, with a new theme and new features, of “Moments like these …” my photo blog which also has Fundraising attached to it.

I’m not sure whether this will turn out to be a good idea, or not, but quite a few people have been kind enough to say how much they’ve liked some (not all) of the photographs I’ve taken.

I thought long and hard about whether to set up an eCommerce site to sell them, but in the end changes in VAT Rules and Regulations by HMRC convinced me not to go down that route – after all, I don’t really need the income, and I don’t really want the hassle of printing and framing more than a few special requests. I just want to get out and walk and take more photographs! So if you would like a high resolution digital copy of any of my images, or you just want to show some appreciation, go to the Fundraising page on “Moments like these …” and (this year) help The Ramblers.

From Forest Farm to St Fagans and back at EveryTrail

Quite a varied walk this with @joenicholls yesterday. We were promised wall-to-wall sunshine but it had disappeared before we’d started from Forest Farm. We were following (loosely) the Cardiff Ramblers walk from Radyr to St Fagans, with a stop planned at The Plymouth Arms for lunch.

Our walk started off well, but after we’d crossed the Taff by the new bridge – excellent addition to the Forest Farm area allowing a circular walk, thanks Cardiff CC – we made a poor decision and turned right heading towards the station at Radyr, but instead found ourselves in a new housing development. We should have turned left under the bridge and followed the Taff up to the station.

We were both new to Radyr, having driven through it many times, but never “explored” it. Up Windsor Road and on to the golf course. No problems. Over the fields and then our first mistake, taking the wrong stile out of a field which resulted in us going too far SW, in the wrong field. Directions on the leaflet could be a touch better imho. Then shortly after a more serious piece of misdirection involving a “natural bowl” and a “transmission tower”. For anyone following the leaflet, the reference to the transmission tower should read … “cross field towards transmission tower keeping the natural bowl on your left” – that way you wouldn’t have ended-up in the wrong corner of a field under the wrong transmission tower :-).

The rest of the walk was uneventful, the walk along the road down to St Fagans is unfortunate but there is no other way of getting there. Good session in The Plymouth Arms and then a wander around the Welsh Folk Museum and then the return walk which presented no problems until we decided to take the “easy” route out of Hailey Park which nearly took us into Llandaff North!

You’re left with the impression (yet again) of how lucky you are to live in a city where there are so many walks that you can do from your front door, or using public transport which are so close to the city, and yet so varied.